


Sam Winchester Is Not Your Therapist

by Lise



Series: Sam and Loki Are Roommates [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, Crossover, Drinking & Talking, Friendship, Gen, not entirely friendly get together, not so much of the friendly variety, shipteases just about everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sam gets dragged to an Avengers!party, everyone snarks, and things end mostly okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sam Winchester Is Not Your Therapist

**Author's Note:**

> Note that this fic shipteases everyone but actually ships…pretty much just Clint/Natasha and barely that, and that it has ~language along with some slightly tactless Avengers.
> 
> All fic in this verse, including some shorts that I will not be crossposting, are also over [at my tumblr.](http://veliseraptor.tumblr.com/tagged/sam+winchester+is+not+your+therapist)

Sam got back to find Loki sprawled on one of their couches, looking like he’d swallowed a lemon whole. He stopped in the doorway, momentarily cautious. “Hey,” he said, finally. Loki’s eyes flicked to him.

“Are you busy on Friday?”

Sam blinked. “Um,” he said, after a moment. “I don’t think so. I mean, not that I can think of. Why?”

Loki’s fingers twitched in a gesture Sam was long familiar with that meant Loki was either annoyed or nervous. Or possibly both. The two seemed to coincide relatively frequently. “Thor appears to have decided that he desires my attendance at some…celebration he and his friends are having.”

“And you want an alibi for why you can’t go?” Sam guessed. Loki’s mouth pinched.

“I _would,_ if it weren’t for the fact that he has decided to claim my attendance as a long owed personal favor.”

Ah. Sam saw where this was going, and wished he didn’t. “So you want someone along you can actually talk to.”

“More likely someone to serve as a distraction so I can avoid the majority of conversation without appearing to do so,” Loki said, a little snippily, and Sam snorted.

“And you think I want to do this _why?_ I don’t know _any_ of them.”

“Natasha is in your maths class.”

“Yeah, I guess- hey,” said Sam, and narrowed his eyes. “How did you know that? Are you stalking me, or her, or both?”

The look Loki cast him was thoroughly scathing. “Neither. I _listen._ I have heard you mention it before. And her. Though clearly you do not remember.” Loki’s lips pressed together, and he made a small, slightly nasal sound. His voice turned plaintive. “…Sam. _Please._ ”

Ah, damn. Loki hardly ever used that voice. Which was a good thing, because it was just _sad._  “Yeah, okay,” he said, after a moment, even though there was a little voice in the back of his head shrieking that this was a _terrible_ idea. “I’ll be your social buffer. Friday, huh?”

“Yes,” Loki said, unfolding from the couch and shaking himself like a dog coming out of the water. “At seven, at one of his friend’s places, apparently. Stark, I think.” He paused, and threw Sam a look that was positively desperate. “ _Please_ don’t be late.”

* * *

Sam was late, but it turned out not to matter, since Loki was hovering out of view of the door waiting for him. “I’ve been here for a half an hour,” Loki hissed at him, and Sam recognized that very particular sort of twitchiness that increased exponentially the closer Loki got to his older brother.

“Sorry,” Sam said, “Work got off late. You could’ve gone ahead.”

Loki threw him a look as if the thought itself were thoroughly, absurdly preposterous. Sam sighed and looked up toward the front door. “Okay,” he said, “Point taken. We can go now, though, right?”

“Yes,” Loki said, his hands twisting together in front of him, tugging at his jacket (overly formal for the occasion, as always), and generally fidgeting. “Yes, we can, though I would rather not – do you think he would notice if I didn’t come,” he asked, without much hope.

“Yeah,” said Sam, “I am pretty sure he would. Come on, let’s just…do this. We don’t have to stay long, right? Just a little while?”

“The moment Thor allows me to exit,” Loki said, with a peculiar kind of fervor, “I intend to be gone.”

As they walked up to the front door, Sam went quickly over everything he knew about the people he was going to be spending the next few hours with. He’d met Thor, once, and doubted Thor remembered. Tony Stark, whose place this was, was obscenely wealthy and by all accounts kind of an asshole, but people seemed to like him anyway. The others he knew even less about, except that he’d never heard anyone say a bad word about Steve Rogers and Natasha made him vaguely nervous even without ever having spoken to her.

Well, now was his chance. Apparently.

Loki knocked on the door twice, briskly, and then stepped back and fidgeted. Watching him was making Sam nervous, but it was only a moment before the door opened, and Sam watched the transformation in Loki with something approaching fascination as he went from anxious restlessness to cool disinterest in the space of seconds.

He appreciated, once again, that no matter how shitty Loki was at expressing it, he trusted Sam, in his own way.

The guy who opened the door was wearing sunglasses (indoors) and holding a glass of something alcoholic. He looked over Sam, then Loki, then Sam again. And grinned with a sort of easy insolence that Dean would envy.

Sam knew his face without ever having met him.

“So you’re Thor’s basketcase little brother,” said Tony.

Loki’s smile was thin and sharp and unfortunate. “And you’re the poster child for Alcoholics Anonymous’s recruitment campaign.” Sam winced.

“Hi,” he said, hoping to head Loki off before he got going. He’d heard Loki go after some guy once who’d been giving Sam shit and it had been almost painful to watch. ‘Verbal evisceration’ wasn’t even adequate. Sam didn’t quite know anyone else who could imply so many vicious things in very few words. “I’m Sam. Uh, Winchester.”

Tony looked him over, and then flicked a finger between the two of them. “Dating?” Sam almost choked on his tongue. Loki smiled thinly.

“Don’t be absurd. I had to bring someone capable of intelligent conversation.”

“Ooh,” said Tony. “Touche.” He grinned. “All right, come on in. You’re already a little past fashionably late, everyone else is already…”

“Loki!” The end of Tony’s sentence was drowned out by that delighted, faintly booming voice. “You came!” Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Loki tense.

“Yes,” he said, voice dry and acerbic, “I hardly thought-” And then was cut off by being swept up quite literally off his feet into one of the more impressive bear hugs Sam had ever witnessed. Loki made a strangled noise that Sam had never heard from him before and privately wanted to record.

“I am so _very_ glad to see you, brother!” said Thor, and Sam watched Loki’s hands bat ineffectually at his biceps and tried not to laugh. “It has been too long since we went carousing together!”

Sam glanced at Tony, but he looked far from surprised, and had another sip of his glass before tilting it in Sam’s direction. “Want anything?”

“Uh…no,” Sam said, after a moment, though he thought he probably would by the end of the night. He would, he was pretty sure, need all his sobriety to make sure this party didn’t end in bloodshed. “But thanks.”

“No problem,” Tony said. “I can already tell you and Steve are going to get along great.”

“Why do you say that?” Sam asked, though he was still having a hard time taking his eyes off of Loki, whose attempts to escape his thorough embracing had gone from frantic cat to slightly sulky resignation.

“You’ve got that look,” Tony said conversationally. “The, ‘oh god I’m going to spend the entire night babysitting aren’t I’ look. By the way, is he single? Because mentally unstable or not, I would _definitely_ -”

“With me, Loki – and you as well, Tony,” Thor said loudly, seizing Loki’s arm and bodily hauling him toward the next room. Loki cast a faintly desperate glance over his shoulder in Sam’s direction. “The party awaits!”

“Well,” said Tony, and clapped Sam soundly on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

Sam took a deep breath and followed him. Couldn’t be that bad, could it?

* * *

Thor’s friends were already sprawled around the living room. Tony had just flopped into his own chair when Sam stepped into the room, hoping not to be noticed. Loki and Thor were sharing a couch, though Loki was sitting as far as possible from his brother while still managing to maintain that sprawl of his.

Natasha he recognized, sitting perfectly still and looking as serene as she ever did, but the guy next to her was unfamiliar to Sam, his arm resting on the back of the couch behind her head and knee brushing against hers. Tony he knew, he guessed Steve was the blonde watching Thor with what Sam supposed was his ‘oh god I’m going to spend the entire night babysitting’ look. He didn’t know the other guy, either, sitting in his own chair and looking like he was trying hard to be inconspicuous.

“This is Loki’s friend,” Thor said.

“Roommate,” Loki corrected, and Thor went on without seeming to notice.

“—Sam Winchester.”

“Loki has friends?” said the guy next to Natasha, more than faintly snide. Sam wanted to wince.

“Uh,” he said. “Hey. Nice to meet you guys.”

“Startling, isn’t it?” Loki said airily, and oh, shit, already? “Almost as startling as the fact that you manage to dress yourself every day. Or – does Romanova manage that for you?”

“Still hilarious,” said Natasha, sounding anything but amused. Thor was frowning at Clint. Tony was frowning at his glass, which appeared to be empty. That was fast, Sam thought, but privately sympathized.

“Do you care for a beer, brother?” Thor asked, almost hurriedly.

“You cannot possibly think that I will get through this ordeal on cheap beer,” Loki said scornfully.

“It isn’t cheap,” Tony objected.

“I manage,” said the one Sam didn’t recognize who was sitting next to Natasha, looking at Loki with what looked an awful lot to Sam like intense dislike. Loki didn’t even glance in his direction.

“That would be due to your singularly appalling taste, Barton.”

“Can’t all be rich assholes.”

“Yes,” said Loki, smoothly, and in that voice Sam had categorized under ‘dangerously mild.’ “Some of us are just assholes.” Thor cast Loki a reproachful look and Steve’s lips pressed together like he wanted to say something.

Tony made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a snort and opened his mouth, expression saying nothing good. Steve cut in with a surprisingly sharp, “Tony, no.”

Tony closed his mouth. Loki’s smile was a little too full of teeth. “Still house-training him, are you, Rogers?” Steve’s face remained stubbornly neutral, not reacting. Sam wondered if he had younger siblings, or if that was a conditioned reaction with this crowd.

“Sam,” said Natasha, suddenly. Sam blinked. He’d been considering grabbing Loki and bodily removing him from the room. And also hadn’t thought that Natasha knew his name. “How’re you doing?”

“…all right,” Sam said, carefully, casting a glance at Loki. He didn’t look in Sam’s direction, and Sam realized despite his loose sprawl he could see a current of tension running through Loki’s body. He shifted. Time to start doing what he came for, he supposed, if Loki would let him. “I’m not actually sure I know everybody here,” he tried.

Natasha’s eyebrows quirked. “At this point, you still think you want to?”

Sam gave her a bit of a smile. “You have a long way to go before you hit too much for me.”

The guy sitting next to Natasha grinned a little. “Careful, Tony’ll think that’s a challenge. I’m Clint.”

“Ask if they’re dating,” Tony said from his corner, and Natasha threw him a look that Sam was pretty sure might have flayed the skin off of a lesser man. Or one less potentially tipsy.

“We’re not,” Natasha said, though Sam couldn’t help but notice that her fingers were absently combing through Clint’s hair. “In case you were going to ask. But don’t. You know me-”

“I didn’t think you knew me,” Sam said honestly, keeping a half an eye on Loki. Thor appeared to be attempting to talk to him. Natasha smiled just a fraction. Sam was pretty sure it was the first time he’d seen her do so.

“I try to keep track of the competition.”

“Watch out,” said Tony. “She kills people in her spare time.”

“Tony,” said Steve, and then gave Sam a slightly apologetic look. “I’m Steve Rogers. Nice to meet you.”

“Everybody knows you,” Tony said, “And everybody knows me, and if you’re Loki’s roommate I’m guessing you know Thor. So that leaves-”

“I _can_ introduce myself,” said the guy in the other chair. And shot Sam a quick, slightly sheepish looking smile. “Bruce. Hi. I’m only quiet because someone’s gotta be in this crowd.”

“Tasha’s quiet,” Clint objected.

“No,” Bruce said, though he shot Natasha a slightly worried look, and Sam noticed that her smile was gone. “Natasha’s biding her time, it’s different.”

Sam smiled, a little uncertain. He could see why Loki had wanted the social buffer. Even for him, an unknown quantity with no background with these people – background Loki apparently did have – there was a sense of looking at a circle of people who’d gotten very close. Drawn together tightly, with no gaps or room for intruders. Maybe they could be friends, but Sam already knew he’d never be one of them, even if this had been any other circumstance.

He knew enough about Loki to know he didn’t take very well to being an outsider. Honestly, Sam thought a little wryly, he didn’t either.

Too late he noticed that Loki was watching him, eyes narrowed. Loki, who knew when Sam was uncomfortable with a situation before Sam sometimes. Before he could steer the subject away, there he was. Predictably. Jumping back into the metaphorical fire.

“If I didn’t know better I’d say that the one to watch would be _you,_ Banner. One never knows when the quiet ones will…snap.” There was something quietly, sleekly vicious in Loki’s tone, and _oh._ Sam knew the last name. Brilliant physics major explodes, destroys lab in nervous breakdown. Right. It’d been all over the rumor mill two years ago.

Everyone in the room was tense at once.

“Loki,” Thor said, sounding heavily disapproving. “There is no reason for you to-”

“Come on, Thor,” the guy next to Natasha said derisively. “You can’t really be surprised.”

“Stop it, guys,” Steve said, sounding slightly unhappy. “Can we just-”

“Yeah, stop it,” Tony said, slightly too loudly. “You’re making Bruce tense.”

“Tony,” said the guy in the chair who was trying to look like he wasn’t there, or like he wanted to vanish. “Let’s not-”

“Can’t have that,” Loki said, and his tone was still that elegant, almost sweet flavor, with just a hint of nastiness underneath. “This house is just full of expensive luxuries, isn’t it?” Sam saw Bruce wince and felt a flare of anger.

“Loki,” he said, lowly, but Loki ignored him. Of fucking course.

“Okay, seriously, somebody slap some duct tape over his mouth. This calls for more alcohol,” Tony said, and stood up. “Anyone else? Loki? Seriously, man, if anyone needs to get really fucking shwasted-”

“I am not inclined to think that I will enjoy myself more bordering on senseless. It certainly doesn’t seem to make _you_ more tolerable.”

“Is there anything that makes _you_ more tolerable?” Tony said, lightly. “Cause honestly at this point I’m not even sure getting regularly fucked would-”

“Well, that’s typical,” Loki said, cutting him off. “When booze fails you, _well,_ sex works just as well, doesn’t it-”

“Hey,” said Steve, and that sharp note was back in his voice. “Lay off.”

“I’d think you’d be more inclined to _on_ honestly, have you consummated your marriage yet,” Loki said, and Steve’s face flushed brightly. Sam had had enough. He stood up.

“Loki,” he said, flatly. “Shut up.”

Loki’s mouth snapped closed, and his head turned, and there was a look on his face of such sheer surprise that Sam almost felt guilty. And then it was gone. “Wow,” said Tony. “I can’t believe that actually-”

“I beg your pardon,” Loki said, not letting Tony finish. There was something crisp and tight about his voice, but if the surprise was gone it was replaced by a raw kind of betrayal. So much for _almost_ guilty. He couldn’t have just let…Loki would get it. Hopefully. “I shall…remove myself.” He rose, fluidly, from the couch. Sam wasn’t sure if more of the room was gaping at him or at Loki as he sketched a bow that was painfully formal. “If you permit, of course.”

“Loki,” said Sam, a little weakly, and then his friend-roommate’s face was closed like a door, and he turned and was out of the room and out of sight in three quick strides. Sam felt his heart sink, wondering how he’d pay for that later. He knew that getting up and following him was the last thing he should do, not right now.

Thor was staring after him with a strange frown. “Excuse me,” he said, after a few moments of loaded silence, and muttered something about the bathroom, but it escaped exactly no one that he took the same exit from the room as Loki.

Sam sighed. “—sorry,” he said, after a moment. “I think I-”

“I have never,” Tony declared, “Seen anyone shut that guy up once he gets going. You, my friend, are _magic._ ” Sam felt a little twinge of shame and fidgeted.

“So _I’m_ curious how you ended up _his_ roommate,” said Clint, looking more relaxed now that Loki was out of the room. Sam wondered what the story was there, and thought he probably didn’t want to know. “Cause I don’t know what I was expecting, but you seem pretty normal. And don’t tell Thor I said this, but his little brother’s…kind of a spaz.”

“ _Kind of,_ ” said Natasha, quiet but acerbic, and Tony didn’t muffle his snort.

Sam felt suddenly and almost alarmingly…defensive. Thought of Loki curled up on the couch watching shitty TV with Sam because neither of them could sleep. The awkward way he hovered when Sam was sick. The face he made at Sam when he thought someone was being inutterably stupid.

The walls he’d built for safety even higher than Sam’s own.

“We get along,” he said with a little smile, and something in his tone had Natasha giving him a long, thoughtful look. He tried to look comfortable. “So how did you guys all meet each other?”

* * *

An hour and a half later, Sam realized that he hadn’t seen Loki since his rather hurried exit. The feeling of guilt had not abated.  He excused himself to go look for him, feeling a probably silly twinge of worry. Loki would never accept an apology. But that didn’t mean Sam couldn’t make one.

There would have been better ways to fix the situation. He’d gotten mad. And Sam was here as Loki’s ally, because it was all too obvious that someone needed to be, since it wasn’t going to be Loki.

He wasn’t, in the end, hard to find. Thor’s voice _carried._

“—want to know how you are.”

Sam nearly walked straight into the room, but paused, for a moment, catching Thor’s hand on Loki’s shoulder and an expression on Loki’s face that was very near wistfulness.

Then he shook Thor’s hand off. “I’m fine, you oaf. I don’t need your hovering, nor your pity.”

“Loki, last year,” Thor began. “I was – I was not the brother I should have been.”

Loki scoffed. “Don’t disgust me. I expected no more of you.”

“You should have been able to,” Thor said stubbornly. “You should have felt able to come to me before you turned to-”

“ _Stop it,_ ” Loki hissed, and Sam could see all the warning signs of his starting to panic blaring like sirens. “If it weren’t for you-”

“If it weren’t for me you might be-” Thor’s voice rose precipitously, and Sam stepped in.

“Oops,” he said, loudly. “Sorry, am I interrupting something?” He could see Loki’s hands clenched into fists, the quick rise and fall of his chest, and really hoped he hadn’t been drinking. Loki drunk was an emotional windstorm at the best of times. The best of times, Sam was quite sure, this was not. “And, uh, anyway, Loki, we’ve gotta go. There’s…a thing. Remember?”

For a brief, terrifying moment Sam was sure Loki was going to ignore him. Or snap, or attack him in that uniquely bitter, vicious way he did when he was scared. Then he turned on his heel and stalked past Sam. “Yes, the thing,” he threw over his shoulder. “My _apologies,_ Thor. I really must go.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said to Thor after Loki had left the room. Thor looked torn for a moment between frustration and unhappiness, and then his face settled into unhappiness. Thor had other people to take care of him, Sam reminded himself forcibly. He was pretty much it, for Loki. “It’ll get better,” he said, quietly.

“Will it?” Thor shook his head, and then sighed. “Look after him as he will not allow me to do, Sam Winchester.”

“Yeah,” said Sam, not quite sure what else to say. “Yeah, I try.”

He said goodbye to the others and slipped out the front door to find Loki standing on the front porch, looking up at the stars, his shoulders a hard line. “Thank you,” he said, after a moment, in that soft, vaguely puzzled way of his.

“You’re welcome.” Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. “Look, I’m…sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

Loki’s smile was mirthless. “Someone has to tell me when to stop.” There was something to his tone, like he’d been told that before, or faintly self-deprecating. Sam sighed.

“Yeah, maybe, but I’m still sorry. You brought me to be your friend.”

Loki shrugged his shoulders loosely. “I can hardly blame you for liking them better,” he said, with a kind of easy calm, and Sam jerked up short.

“You think _that’s-“_ he swore. “They’re nice. Really. But they’re not my friends, okay? You are. I don’t like them better.” Loki was quiet. “I _don’t._ ”

After a moment, he heard Loki exhale. “You needn’t apologize.”

“Yeah, doesn’t mean I’m not going to.” Sam paused, and leaned over to bump Loki’s shoulder with his, to get a quick, annoyed look. “Ready to go home?”

“Yes,” said Loki, after a moment, his shoulders relaxing a little. Sam started down the stairs, and a moment later Loki called, “Wait.”

“Huh?” Sam said, turning around. Loki had a strange expression on his face that Sam wasn’t sure he could pin down.

“—I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight,” Loki said, finally. “Would you be up for a marathon rewatch of the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies?”

Almost two years, Sam thought. _We get along._ Yeah, they did. Sometimes better and sometimes worse, but they did. “Long as you’re okay with me pointing out each and every difference from the books along the way,” he said. Loki’s smile was a little lopsided, but Sam couldn’t talk on that front.

“Do I _ever_ mind?”

“Good roommate,” Sam said, and waited for Loki to follow him down the stairs. The brush of Loki’s shoulder against Sam’s, the most minute contact, might have been accident.

Sam didn’t really think so.


End file.
